Thanks! The 2 hospitals here do not celebrate nurses week. Please all nurses celebrate yourself for nurses week! Congratulations to certified nurses and nurses working on advanced degrees. Nurses work hard-take a break for YOU!

How is it that the big whiz-bang health care organizations can build buildings, buy (into) the latest technology, have meditation gardens in the lobby–but they can’t express appreciation to the folks at the front lines, the nurses!!! Saying “Thanks for all you do” with a cafeteria voucher just doesn’t cut it. (Actually, I value the thank-yous from patients much more than the weak-kneed thank-yous from the hospital or the manager, anyway.)

Happy nurses week to all of us who have chosen to dedicate our lives to helping others! I am strictly a geriatric nurse and have been in the profession since 1982! Long time right? I graduated when I was 18 from nursing school. People often ask me why didn’t I go onto something else in the nursing profession? How could I work in “such places” ?? Well my answers are many but one of the main reasons is why not? I love listening to all my patients and their stories for one. They have already lived a full life and have so much to tell us an share with us. They need caring loving people to help them an care for them as they come closer to the end of their lives. I see myself as one of the last people they will encounter throughout their journey through life. Maybe they have had an unusually difficult life or maybe their family is gone already and they have no one to hd their hand or ease their pain as they begin to pass and leave this life. But now they have me. Or maybe their family needs someone to help them deal with the pain they are experiencing as they begging to lose their loved one. Maybe they just néed a friend or a shoulder to cry on. They can have mine. I pray with them, I care for them and their loved ones, I try to provide as much physical comfort to their frail bodies as they begin to fail and while I am doing all of this, I try to smile and hopefully brighten their day maybe just one last time in their life! And as they hold my hand and I look into their eyes I see peace! I have brought them peace and comfort! What better way to help another human being along with those around them. Why??? Because one day hopefully maybe someone will do the same for me when it is my time. Why?? Because they deserve it. They are the generations before us an deserve all the love and respect and kindness we can offer to them at the en of a lifelong journey! I’m paying it forward. I make a difference. Why?? Because I love them. Happy nurses week everyone. God bless.